Lab test confirms bricks washed ashore in Quezon town ‘high-grade’ cocaine

LUCENA CITY—Lab tests confirmed that cocaine weighing 7 kilograms was the substance packed as bricks that washed ashore on Sunday (July 7) in the town of Mauban, Quezon province.

Col. Ramil Montillo, Quezon police chief, on Monday (July 8) said the haul was high-grade cocaine worth at least P5 million per kg in the streets.

Montilla said the Quezon police gave a cash reward to fish vendor Ruel Perez, who found the cocaine shipment while he was at a picnic with his family on a beach at the Mauban village of Cagsiay 1, which faces the Pacific Ocean.

He said the cash reward was a token of appreciation and gratitude by the police to Perez. Montilla did not reveal the amount of the reward.

Perez immediately surrendered the drug shipment to police after finding it past noon.

Montilla directed all town police stations to check all coastal villages for drug shipments being washed ashore.

He advised residents to immediately surrender any suspicious-looking package to government authorities.

Last February, a 15-year-old boy found a brick of cocaine weighing more than a kilogram also in Mauban.

In April last year, fishermen from the island town of Perez, also in Lamon Bay in the Pacific Ocean, found a total of 28 kg of cocaine, worth P280 million, and 16.5 liters of liquid chemical that could make about 13 kg of crystal meth worth P130 million. DELFIN T. MALLARI JR. (Editor: Tony Bergonia)